When my water broke, I reached down and tasted your coming
by Nikki Ummel
I am up to my armpits
in creation.
Your birth-wet mouth. Bawling.
My snuffling mother love.
I am not numb.
Inside-out undies party we
sleep without sheets.
Goodbye laundry. Pile yourselves elsewhere.
My naughty daughter.
I stopped waiting for you.
Then there you were. My little deuce coupe. My body
the dark horse
you rode in on.
Born on a Wednesday
by river road.
Us drunking the soil. Us planting the toothache tree.
Yolky child. When will I become too much for you?
Nikki Ummel (she/her) is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki has been published or has work forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and twice awarded the Academy of American Poets' Andrea Saunders Gereighty Poetry Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. She has two chapbooks, Hush (Belle Point Press, 2022) and Bayou Sonata (NOLA DNA, 2022). You can find her on the web at www.nikkiummel.com, Twitter @NikkiUmmel, and Instagram @nikkiummelwrites.
